Extract the convert tool as a standalone program?

[gforcada]

Hi all!

I've been using calibre for long time and I'm enjoying using it a lot! Thanks for doing it!

Has it ever been considered splitting calibre into a pure python converter tool and a GUI app that on top of all its functionalities also has the converter tool as a dependency?

Having that as separate tools would allow one to use it more easily for converting between formats without having to install Qt and all the dependencies and stacks that those bring. I've seen a few pure python apps on pypi that handle this or that format, either reading or writing, but a swiss army knife like ebook-convert would be awesome to have specially if there is on top of it a stable API that one can use to script away conversions

I have seen the Source install on Linux part of the user manual, but either I missed something, or I don't see how to get these sources, as they are indeed, not on the git repository, but one needs to generate them (that's what confuses me, that it says source install, but the git sources are not that "source").

Is that the solution for my problem? If so, would anyone be so kind to explain how to get this so called "source install" I can contribute that back as a pull request on the repository

[kovidgoyal]

ebook-convert is perfectly standalone and if you install the calibre binaries you dont need to install anything else. And the conversion parts use Qt and various other bits of native code, they are never going to be pure python, that would be horrenduously slow. If you want to integrate your python code with calibre code use https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/dev...all-of-calibre

[gforcada]

Thanks for the reply!

It took me some time to figure out where this source install is mentioned, finally found it at https://calibre-ebook.com/download_linux